Charities are often born out of great disaster or personal tragedy. For many people, what’s left is an overwhelming desire to construct something positive out of a life-changing situation. They are driven by anger, frustration, hope and a sense that they are the only people who can bring about change.

This commitment and ambition is essential in the early years after founding a charity. The trouble is, single-mindedness quickly turns into stubbornness – and it’s a liability.

I have worked as a director in a charity for a number of years. I am astonished at just how much unfettered power my founder-chief executive wields. The golden rule of the founder-chief executive is this: my way or no way.

As a charity boss, I despair of Victorian attitudes ruining our good work

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Founders are generally very passionate people. They are entrepreneurial. They multitask because they’ve had to do so from the beginning. When setting up a charity, they tend, for obvious reasons, to put their friends on the board and are fearful of others who might ask difficult questions. Founders have great parental instincts and use them to great effect in the early years of their work. But treating your staff as kids and the charity as your baby is bad management.

Shortly after I joined the charity, a senior colleague, who has since resigned, talked to me about “founder syndrome”. I paid little attention, putting it down to the usual office politics. But as time passed, it became increasingly clear to me that the chief executive was displaying all those behaviours my ex-colleague had talked about: constantly ignoring advice; refusing to have meetings with directors; interfering in mundane operational issues; dishing out meaningless tasks. Any challenge by staffwas deemed a personal attack on both the founder and the charity itself. The two seem to be almost indistinguishable.

The fact is that a charity should outlive its founder and not the other way round. I’ve worked for several heads of public and private sector organisations. All had these attributes in common: trust your staff, devolve authority, recruit specialists. One chief executive told me: “I recruit people better than me. That way, we’ve sorted the succession planning.”

Treating your staff as kids and the charity as your baby is bad management

All my ex-bosses knew they had a sell-by date. This was not false modesty but hard-headed business planning: what defines a good leader is knowing when to move on. It’s inconceivable to me that any charity founder should still be in charge years later. There is no place for a cult of personality in the third sector.

How can the third sector enable founders to grow – and then go – with dignity? Strong governance is vital. Trustees have that tricky balancing act of needing to be both supportive and challenging. Yet as a director I have never had a formal meeting with any trustee. The chief executive keeps them at arm’s length. That cannot be right.

There is a long list of staff who have left our charity because of the chief executive’s management style. I can guarantee that the board is not aware of that. It’s such a waste of energy and talent.

The rest of the senior management team, meanwhile, feels unwilling or unable to challenge the all-powerful chief executive. Truthfully, I suspect they’re often just too exhausted, after years spent trying to manage the boss. And if we can’t all act together, the chief executive simply isolates the one doing the “complaining”.

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I do believe there can be an ongoing role for founders, as semi-independent advisers or spokespeople. But that would have to be on the clear understanding that they are no longer running the show, and would be subject to the same rules of engagement as other staff. I fear that would be a step (back) too far for some.

If you’re setting up a charity now, good on you. Just put a reminder in your calendar for five years’ time saying “time to go”.

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